Geolibertarianism is the belief that each individual has an
exclusive right to the fruits of his or her labor, and thus an exclusive right
to the value of those fruits; and that all individuals have an equal right to
land, and thus an equal right to the value of land.

By embracing this belief, geolibertarians are simply taking the
core libertarian principle of
self-ownership to its logical conclusion: Just as the right to oneself
implies the right to the fruit of one's labor (i.e., the right to property), the right to the fruit of one's labor implies the right to
labor, and the right to labor implies the right to labor -- somewhere. Hence
John Locke's proviso
that one has "property" in land only to the
extent that there is "enough, and as good left in common for others." When
there is not, land begins to have rental value. Thus, the rental
value of land reflects the extent to which Locke's proviso has been violated,
thereby making community-collection of rent (CCR)
a just and necessary means of upholding the Lockean principle of private
property. In the late 19th century, CCR became known as the "Single
Tax" -- a term often used to denote Henry George's proposal
to abolish all taxation save for a single tax on the value of land (irrespective
of the value of improvements in or on it).

Throughout the rest of this FAQ I will often refer to the Single Tax as the LVT (land
value tax).

No, because it would neither increase demand nor decrease supply. Henry George explained it best when he wrote:

"There could be no limit
whatever to prices did the fixing of them rest entirely upon the seller. To the
price which will be given and received for anything, two wants must concur—the
want or will of the buyer, and the want or will of the seller. The one wants to
give as little as he can, the other to get as much as he can, and the point at
which the exchange will take place is the point where these two desires come to
a balance or effect a compromise. In other words, price is determined by the
equation of supply and demand. And, evidently, taxation cannot affect price
unless it affects the relative power of one or other of the elements of this
equation. The mere wish of the seller to get more, the mere wish of the buyer to
pay less, can neither raise nor lower prices. Nothing will raise prices unless
it either decreases supply or increases demand. Nothing will lower prices unless
it either increases supply or decreases demand. Now, the taxation of land values…neither
increases the demand for land nor decreases the supply of land, and therefore
cannot increase the price that the landowner can get from the user. Thus it is
impossible for landowners to throw such taxation on land users by raising rents.
Other things being unaltered, rents would be no higher than before, while the
selling price of land, which is determined by net rents, would be much
diminished." [Emphasis mine] --Why
the Landowner Cannot Shift the Tax on Land Values, pp. 2-3

So, far from increasing the price of land, the LVT would
actually decrease it. The reason for this becomes more clear when one considers
that the price of land is nothing more than capitalized rent – i.e., the
annual rental value divided by the interest rate. In short, the more rent is
diverted into the public treasury, the less rent there is to be capitalized into a sale price.

No, self-ownership is. That is to say, the foundation of property
rights (and the freedom that flows from those rights) is the property that each
person has in himself and, by extension, in the fruits his labor.

"Though the earth, and all inferior creatures be common
to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any
right to but himself." -- John
Locke, 2nd Treatise of
Government, Ch. 5

"The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable."
-- Adam Smith, The
Wealth of Nations, Bk 1, Ch. 10, Pt 2

"The property rights that each citizen has in himself
are the foundation of a free society." -- James
Bovard,
Freedom
In Chains, p. 86

"There is only one fundamental right (all others are its
consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life. Life is a process
of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to
engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action--which means: the freedom to
take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support,
the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life…Since man
has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the
product of his effort has no means to sustain his life." -- Ayn
Rand, Capitalism:
The Unknown Ideal, pp. 321-2

"The right of life and liberty--that is to say, the right of the man to
himself--is not really one right and the right of property another right.
They are two aspects of the same perception--the right of property being but
another side, a differently stated expression, of the right of man to
himself. The right of life and liberty, and the right of the individual to
himself, presupposes and involves the right of property, which is the exclusive
right of the individual to the things his exertion has produced." --
Henry George,
A
Perplexed Philosopher, p. 210

No, because government would have no authority to dictate when, how, or by
whom land itself is
used; it would only have the authority to ensure the rent of land goes to
everyone on an equal basis, since all individuals have an equal right to the use
of land. Henry George put it thusly:

"We do not propose to assert equal rights to land by keeping land
common, letting any one use any part of it at any time. We do not propose the
task, impossible in the present day of society, of dividing land in equal
shares; still less the yet more impossible task of keeping it so divided.
"We propose--leaving land in the private possession of
individuals, with full liberty on their part to give, sell or bequeath it--simply to levy on it for public uses a tax that shall equal the annual value
of the land itself, irrespective of the use made of it or the improvements on
it....We would accompany this tax on land values with the repeal of all taxes
now levied on the products and processes of industry--which taxes, since they
take from the earnings of labor, we hold to be infringements of the right of
property." [Emphasis mine] -- The Condition of Labor, p.
8

The only alternative to George's proposal is to treat land as the unconditional property of a
relative few. The problem with this alternative is that, when taken to its logical conclusion, we
find that the fruits of individual labor must inevitably be treated as conditional
property for everyone else. Why? Because no one can produce wealth in the first
place unless he or she first has access to land. Consequently, since all land is legally
occupied, and since producing more land isn't an option, those who don't have titles
to land cannot legally access the earth -- and thus cannot legally sustain their
own lives -- unless they first "consent" to pay a portion of their
earnings to those who do have titles to land. (This is why geolibertarians
regard landed property as the mother of all entitlements.)

Land itself does not originate from labor; thus, property
in land does not originate from labor, but from the law that confers
ownership to an individual or group. Landed property is therefore law-made
property, and is, in that sense, clearly distinct from man-made property. Thus,
to compel one group to pay rent to another group for mere access to the earth
is to elevate law-made property above man-made property. And since the latter is an extension of
self-ownership, to elevate the former above the latter is to strike a blow at the very foundation of property
rights.

"Disregard of the equal right to land necessarily involves violations of
the unequal right to wealth." -- Max Hirsch, Democracy
vs. Socialism, p. 372

To this some might object that the LVT does just that -- compels one group to
pay rent to another group for mere access to the earth. While this objection may
sound logical at first, it is fatally flawed. Why? Because it ignores a
universal law of today's economy: the fact that land rent gets paid either way
-- regardless of whether or not it gets diverted into the public
treasury.

Thus, it is not a question of if land rent gets paid,
but to whom and on what basis.

If it is paid exclusively to titleholders on the basis
of the earth being the unconditional property of titleholders, then, for reasons given above, the property that
non-titleholders have in themselves and in the fruits of their labor is thereby
violated. If, on the other hand, it is paid to the community on the basis of the
individual members of that community each having an equal right to land,
then said property right (the right to one's self and the fruit of one's labor) is thereby upheld for everyone -- both
titleholder and non-titleholder alike.

Another common objection is that, if government collects the rent of
land, it automatically becomes the owner of land. This objection is based
on the myth that the
terms "rent collector" and "owner" are synonymous. While
many rent collectors do, indeed, own the property on which they collect rent,
there are, nevertheless, thousands of private rental agents and property
managers all over the country who routinely collect rent on properties they do
not own. Thus, one does not have to be an "owner" to be a
"rent collector." Government is no exception to this rule.

That doesn't mean the government of, say, North Korea does
not assert ownership over the land on which it collects rent. It does. But it is not
merely the authority to collect land rent, but the authority to dictate how land is used,
that makes the North Korean government an "owner" of land. Critics of
the LVT repeatedly insist that you can't have one authority without the
other, but as mentioned above, the rent-collection services provided by non-owning
rental agents and property managers prove just the opposite.

This becomes easier to understand once you realize that "property"
refers, not to a single right, but to a bundle of rights -- the right to
rental income being one of them. The other rights include the right to possess,
use, exclude, and transfer title. As any lawyer will tell you, those rights can
be transferred in whole or in part.

"The concept of a bundle of rights comes from old English law. In
the middle ages, a seller transferred property by giving the purchaser a
handful of earth or a bundle of bound sticks from a tree on the property. The
purchaser, who accepted the bundle, then owned the tree from which the sticks
came and the land to which the tree was attached. Because the rights of
ownership (like the sticks) can be separated and individually transferred,
the sticks became symbolic of those rights." [Emphasis mine] -- Fillmore
W. Galaty, Wellington J. Allaway, & Robert C. Kyle,Modern Real Estate Practice, 14th ed.,
p. 16

This is precisely why, in the U.S., it is possible for city councilmen to
collect a portion of land rent through property tax levies, yet be lawfully
excluded from the land itself by whoever holds title to that land.
Although the local government in this case has a legal right to a certain
percentage of the land's rental value, the titleholder has all the other rights of
the aforementioned "bundle."

Not only would the titleholder retain those rights under a
geolibertarian system, those rights would be strengthened by the fact
that (1) he would no longer be taxed for being productive, thus making it far
easier for him to afford whatever the rental charge is, and (2) the law would
require any surplus revenue to be distributed equally as a citizens
dividend. (The latter would
provide a built-in incentive for citizens to bring enormous pressure to
bear on government to limit its spending,
since less wasteful spending would mean a greater surplus, and thus a higher
dividend.)

No, because (1) while food is in "limited" supply, it is not in fixed
supply; and (2) with food starvation is not the only alternative to
purchasing it from others, whereas with land it is.

With food, one can always produce instead of buy. Not so with land. Some
might counter that one can always produce to earn the wages needed to acquire
land, but this presupposes the very issue in question – access to land.
While it is true people can always acquire land by earning the wages needed to
rent or purchase it, one cannot earn wages to begin with unless one first
has access to land, which brings us right back where we started.

Food is a product of labor; land is not. Thus, the notion that one has an
exclusive right to the fruits of one’s labor is incompatible with the notion
that there is a common right to the value of those fruits, while it is not
incompatible with the notion that there is a common right to the value of land.

No, but not for lack of trying. Rothbard's argument against the LVT is
fatally flawed for at least two reasons -- one moral, the other economic. From a
moral perspective, it completely ignores the unjust interference that the
overextension of law-made property imposes on man-made property. From an
economic perspective, it is based on a false understanding of what conditions
are necessary for land to have rental value.

In Libertarian Party at Sea on Land, LP activist Dr. Harold
Kyriazi explains why Rothbard's attack on the LVT was misguided at best. The
following is from pages 57-61 of that book:

###################################

The only well-known libertarian writer whom I know to have explicitly, and at
great length, opposed the idea of community collected user fees for natural
resources is Murray Rothbard, which is odd, given his admiration for Albert
Jay Nock and Frank
Chodorov, who, in turn, revered Henry
George. Rothbard apparently had extensive discussions with Georgists:

If every man owns his own person and therefore his own labor, and if by
extension he owns whatever property he has "created" or gathered out
of the previously unused, unowned "state of nature," then what of the
last great question: the right to own or control the earth itself?
... It is at this point that Henry George and his followers, who have gone all
the way so far with the libertarians, leave the track and deny the individual
right to own the piece of land itself, the ground on which these
activities have taken place. (pp. 33-34, For a New Liberty.)

The following is taken from his The Ethics of Liberty.

(p. 50, footnote 2): A modified variant of this "Columbus Complex"
holds that the first discoverer of a new island or continent could properly lay
claim to the entire continent by himself walking around it (or hiring others to
do so), and thereby laying out a boundary for the area. In our view, however,
their claim would still be no more than to the boundary itself, and not to any
of the land within it, for only the boundary will have been transformed and used
by man.

With this statement, Rothbard may seem to have carried the "first
use" doctrine to its illogical extreme. (If walking over some land
constitutes transformation and use, then is it just one's footprints that one
owns? Or does one's rightful claim extend out to all the underbrush one has
cleared away? Or, can one claim land as far as the eye can see? This is the very
definition of the word "arbitrary.") But in his defense, to convert
the claim into actual ownership would, Rothbard would say, require actual use
(though we're again faced with the question of what constitutes "use"
-- see p. 79, "Anti-Rothbard..."). For example, earlier, in a Robinson
Crusoe paradigm, he stated that Crusoe's "true property--his actual
control over material goods--would extend only so far as his actual labor
brought them into production. His true ownership could not extend beyond the
power of his own reach."

What, then, would Rothbard say about large American corporations owning, but
not using, millions of acres of land, as some now do? He gives us his answer in
an essay he wrote on Henry George's Land Value Tax idea, entitled "The
Single Tax: Economic and Moral Implications" (FEE "Special Essay
Series," 1957). Here are a few examples from that work:

Well, what about idle land? Should the sight of it alarm us? On the contrary,
we should thank our stars for one of the great economic facts of nature: that
labor is scarce relative to land...Since labor is scarce relative to
land, and much land must therefore remain idle, any attempt to force all
land into production would bring economic disaster. Forcing all land into use
would take labor and capital away from more productive uses, and compel their
wasteful employment on land, a disservice to consumers. [Emphasis Rothbard's.]

Of course, LVT would and could do no such thing, as those who strive to put
idle land into productive use would have to bid against other land users for
labor, and only the best uses of labor and land would win out. Thus, rather than
forcing all land into use, LVT would discourage all
but the most productive use of land, just as any market tends to allocate
resources most wisely. Another thing that would happen is that the earnings of
labor would increase due to increased competition for it, and (ideally) none of
the produced wealth would go to landowners qua landowners. Let me
rephrase Rothbard's last sentence in a way that makes sense: Forcing land
users to pass over ideal idle land and utilize marginal land instead, is
wasteful of human labor and natural opportunities, a disservice to all mankind
and a boon only to landlords and land speculators.

But here's the most embarrassing passage:

A 100% tax on rent would cause the capital value of all land
to fall promptly to zero.

Correct.

Since owners could not obtain any net rent, the sites would become valueless
on the market.

False! They'd be valueless only to those market participants
who wish only to speculate in land, not to those who wish to use
land in some productive endeavor.

From that point on, sites, in short, would be free.

Wrong again. While it's true there'd be no sale price for
vacant land, one would still have to pay the ground-rent to use it.

Further, since all rent would be siphoned off to the government, there would
be no incentive for owners to charge any rent at all.

Wrong yet again. He's assuming the LVT would be set by an actual ground-rent
charged by the landlord, rather than being an assessed value that would have to
be recouped. And, I might add, total rental costs would tend to decrease as
additional units come on the market as the monopoly stranglehold on land loses
its grip.

Rent would be zero as well, and rentals would thus be free.

He continues to pound a straw man.

The first consequence of the single tax, then, is that no revenue would
accrue from it.

He took a wrong turn, and just keeps going!

Far from supplying all the revenue of government, the single tax would yield
no revenue at all! For if rents are zero, a 100% tax on rents will also yield
nothing.

Rothbard then goes on to state,

Compelling any economic goods to be free wreaks economic havoc...the result
is to introduce complete chaos in land sites.

Completely false. Even if LVT were applied at a national level, and there
were no competition among municipalities for residents, people would still bid
on the leases of occupied property, providing price information. (For more on
this, see p. 97, "How would LVT work?")

In Power and Market: Government and the Economy (second edition,
1977), Rothbard went even further into the realm of irrationality in his attempt
to refute Georgist land theory (p. 131):

Contrary to Georgist doctrine, however, the land problem does not stem from
free-market ownership of ground land.

I know of no Georgist who would ever use the phrase
"free-market" in conjunction with our current, individual monopoly
market in land.

It stems from failure to live up to a prime condition of free-market property
rights, namely, that new, unowned land be first owned by its first user, and
that from then on, it become the full private property of the first user
or those who receive or buy the land from him. [my emphasis]

It is an obvious fiction that any use, however small or large the effort,
should grant full private ownership for all time, unless we're talking about a
make-believe world with unlimited land where access to all of it is
instantaneous (i.e., where travel time is zero). This fiction ignores the fact
that someone who, for example, puts up a fence and lets a cow graze, is much
less the rightful "owner" of land than one who builds an industrial
plant or a shopping mall. (For more on this, see p. 79,
"Anti-Rothbard...")

No. Karl Marx’s labor theory of value asserts that the value of an object is
a result of the labor expended to produce it. Henry George flat-out rejected
this view:

"It is never the amount of labor that has been exerted in bringing
a thing into being that determines its value, but always the amount of labor
that will be rendered in exchange for it." -- The Science
of Political Economy, p. 253

Why, then, do some mistakenly identify Marx's labor theory of value as being
one of the core premises of the LVT? Because many LVT-advocates often describe
land value as being produced by the community, and, in so doing, unwittingly sacrifice clarity for brevity. What they actually
mean is this. It's not that members of the surrounding community produce land
value itself, but that they produce the goods and services which give rise
to that value. Max Hirsch put it this way:

"The value of labour-products is the measure of
the service which their rightful owner has rendered to the community. The value of land is the measure of the service
which the community is expected to render to the owners of land." -- Democracy
vs. Socialism, p. 348

No, it is based on the Lockean idea that the right to land is an equal
right.

By that I mean: the idea that an individual has "property" in land only to the
extent that there is, in the words of John Locke, "enough, and as good left
in common for others." In that sense, the right to land is not a collective
right, but an individual right that exists independently of the
collective (i.e. "society"). The
equality of this right is merely a limitation that arises from the presence of
others with like rights.

By contrast, a collective right to land dictates that an individual does not
have a right to use any land unless society -- either
explicitly or by omission -- has granted him the right to do so.

With the equal right to land, one does not require the consent of
society to use land. The right to the use of land belongs at birth to each
individual. So while the consent of others is not needed, it is, nevertheless,
necessary that in the exercise of that right, one does not infringe upon the equal right of others -- i.e.,
violate Locke's proviso that there be "enough, and as good left in
common for others." And since the rental value of land provides an accurate
measure of the extent to which said proviso has been violated,
"others" should be compensated in accordance with that
value. At the same time, of course, all taxes on labor
and capital should be abolished, since they violate the
exclusive right that each individual has to the fruits of his own labor.

No, because if only some people "own" the earth, then only some
have a right to live upon it.

All individuals must have access to the earth in order to exercise
their right to sustain their own lives. Thus, to allow the earth to become the
unconditional property of a relative few is to deny this right to everyone
else, since it makes the latter obligated at birth to pay the former for
mere access to the planet -- as if the former were responsible for the earth’s
very existence.

While the private collection of land rent may seem harmless at a micro-level,
at a macro-level it constitutes an entitlement scheme, whereby Group A receives payment from Group B, even though Group A renders no service in return.
In that sense, it violates the right of the members of Group B to the fruits of
their labors.

"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed."
-- Adam Smith, The
Wealth of Nations, Bk 1, Ch. 6

If some people fail to see this, it is because they, in the words of Henry
Hazlitt, "overlook the woods in their precise and minute examination of
particular trees." In this case they overlook the affect that private rent-collection has on the economy as a whole in their precise and minute examination
of particular transactions, and how these transactions benefit particular groups.
Overall, the payment of land rent to the few at the expense of the many
imposes on the latter artificially high costs of living on one hand, and
artificially low wages on the other.

To learn more about why the current land market is anything but
"voluntary," read the following article by Fred Foldvary.

Yes, for the simple reason that "force," as such, is neither good
nor bad. If used to defend one's person or property from aggressors, or to
enforce payment of a rightful debt, it is a good thing. If used to
harm the person or property of a non-consenting other, or to enforce payment of
a wrongful debt, it is a bad thing.

A tax on wages or
interest implies that the income one receives in return for
the exertion of one's labor, or for the use of one's capital goods, belongs (at
least in
part) to others. This conflicts with the basic libertarian principle that you
have an exclusive right to the fruits of your labor.

A tax on rent implies that the income one receives
for the value of the
land one holds belongs to others. Since land itself (1) is not the fruit of
anyone's labor, and (2) is that to which all have an equal right of access; and
since the rent of land (1) is not a return to labor, and (2) reflects the
extent to which Locke's proviso has been violated, a "tax" on rent does
not conflict with
the principle that you have an exclusive right to the fruits
of your labor, but is in fact a just and necessary means of upholding it.

Thus, the part of one's income that is taken via taxation of wages and interest
constitutes the enforcement of a wrongful debt, whereas the part of one's
income that is taken via taxation of rent constitutes the enforcement of a rightful
debt.

"As to what constitutes robbery, it is...the taking or withholding
from another of that which rightfully belongs to him. That which rightfully
belongs to him, be it observed, not that which legally belongs to him." [Emphasis
original] -- Henry George,
Property In Land, p. 46.

Still, critics will argue, a tax on rent involves the use of force, and is
therefore wrong. The problem with this argument becomes evident when they are
presented with the scenario of a tenant no longer able to pay a titleholder for
the value of the land he is using, and then asked whether or not it would be legitimate to use force to remove the tenant from the
titleholder's land. They
typically answer yes to this question, and when
pressed for an explanation, finally concede that yes, there is
such a thing as a legitimate use of force when it comes to upholding a rightful
debt.

The dispute, then, is not over whether force, in and of itself, is right or
wrong, but whether the debt in question is right or wrong -- i.e.,
whether or not the taxation of rent conflicts with the libertarian principle that
each person
has property in himself and, by extension, in the fruits of his labor. Geolibertarians hold that it does not so conflict, since rent, as
mentioned before, is not a return to labor.

Rent is in fact a return to land, meaning the percentage of one's income one
could receive simply by renting out the land one holds to someone else. Yet to whom does this value rightfully
belong? Since land values derive, not from what titleholders do, but from the extent to which "others" (particularly those who make
up the surrounding "community") are denied access to land they wish to use,
and to which they have an equal right of access, it follows that this value is
rightfully owed to these others, while wrongfully owed to titleholders. All individuals have an equal right to land, so all have an
equal right to the rental value thereof.

No, because land rent, as mentioned before, gets paid either way -- regardless of whether or
not it gets diverted into the public treasury.

Even when you pay the sale price of land, you are paying land rent, since the
sale price is simply the rental value divided by the interest rate. And
since land is in fixed supply, decreases in land value taxation are invariably
capitalized by titleholders into higher rents and land prices. Thus, people in
general, and the working poor in particular, end up paying back in higher rents and land prices what they presumably get from the tax
cut; and pay back even more in terms of (1) a lower margin
of production (and thus lower pre-tax wages), and (2) a heavier reliance on
wage and sales taxes.

So once again, it is not
a question of if land rent gets paid, but to whom and on what basis -- to a fraction of the population, on the basis of the earth being
"owned" by a relative few; or to everyone equally, on the basis of the
earth being that to which all have an equal right of access? Geolibertarians
believe it should be the latter, since that is the only just and practical way
of establishing true equality of opportunity without enforcing equality of
outcome in the process.

As for poor people, the LVT would actually make it much easier for
them to acquire land, since it would reduce the artificially high price of land, as well as increase
wages by raising the margin of production, on the one hand, and reducing the
need for wage taxes, on the other.

No, because the value of land has no reference to a cost of
production; it is purely a function of demand. This, among other things, led
Adam Smith to conclude that:

"Both ground-rents and the ordinary rent of land are a species of
revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of
his own. Though a part of this revenue should be taken from him in order to
defray the expenses of the state, no discouragement will thereby be given to any
sort of industry....Ground-rents and the ordinary rent of land are, therefore,
perhaps, the species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax
imposed upon them." [Emphasis mine] -- The Wealth of
Nations, Bk 5, Ch. 2, Pt 1

"The striking result is that a tax on rent will lead to no
distortions or economic inefficiencies. Why not? Because a tax on pure
economic rent does not change anyone's behavior. Demanders are unaffected
because their price is unchanged. The behavior of suppliers is unaffected
because the supply of land is fixed and cannot react. Hence, the economy operates
after the tax exactly as it did before the tax--with no distortions or inefficiencies
arising as a result of the land tax." [Emphasis original] -- Economics,
16th ed., p. 250

What is even more "striking" is that Samuelson's remarks are only
half-true. Not only will a tax on rent lead to no distortions or economic
inefficiencies, it will actually stimulate the economy by (1) lowering the
entrance-barrier into the market place, and (2) encouraging much more efficient use of land within that market place. A well-documented case in point
is the overall success of the "split
rate" property tax (whereby land values are taxed at a higher rate than
improvements) in over a dozen localities throughout Pennsylvania.

It is the taxation of wages and interest that discourages production --
"wages" being the return to labor,
and "interest" the return to capital.
Thus, it follows that the more we shift the tax burden off labor and capital and
onto land values, the more prosperous the economy will be overall. Henry George
put it this way:

"To abolish that taxation which, acting and reacting, now hampers every
wheel of exchange and presses upon every form of industry, would be like
removing an immense weight from a powerful spring. Imbued with fresh energy,
production would start into new life, and trade would receive a stimulus which
would be felt to the remotest arteries. The present method of taxation...
operates upon energy, and industry, and skill, and thrift, like a fine upon
those qualities. If I have worked harder and built myself a good house while you
have been contented to live in a hovel, the taxgatherer now comes annually to
make me pay a penalty for my energy and industry, by taxing me more than you. If
I have saved while you wasted, I am mulct, while you are exempt. If a man build
a ship we make him pay for his temerity, as though he had done an injury to the
state; if a railroad be opened, down comes the tax collector upon it, as though
it were a public nuisance; if a manufactory be erected we levy upon it an annual
sum which would go far toward making a handsome profit. We say we want capital,
but if any one accumulate it, or bring it among us, we charge him for it as
though we were giving him a privilege. We punish with a tax the man who covers
barren fields with ripening grain, we fine him who puts up machinery, and him
who drains a swamp....
"To abolish these taxes would be to lift the whole
enormous weight of taxation from productive industry. The needle of the
seamstress and the great manufactory; the cart horse and the locomotive; the
fishing boat and the steamship; the farmer's plow and the merchant's stock, will
be alike untaxed....Instead of saying to the producer, as it does now, 'The more
you add to the general wealth the more shall you be taxed!' the state would say
to the producer, 'Be as industrious, as thrifty, as enterprising as you choose,
you shall have your full reward! You shall not be fined for making two blades of
grass grow where one grew before; you shall not be taxed for adding to the
aggregate wealth.'" --
Progress
& Poverty, pp. 434-435

No, it has long been common practice in the real estate industry for
land value to be assessed separately from the value of improvements:

"Land value represents the present market value of the land.
It does not include the value of improvements. Land value is arrived at
through an analysis of current sales of comparable land in the general area. It
is computed separately because land is not depreciable." [Emphasis
original] -- William L. Ventolo, Jr., Ralph Tamper and Wellington J. Allaway, Mastering
Real Estate Mathematics, p. 115.

The only people who seem intent on ignoring this fact are opponents of the
LVT.

No. Those who insist otherwise are confusing two different senses of the word
land. In the every day sense, land usually refers to the dry surface of the
earth; in the economic sense, however, it refers not just to the dry surface of
the earth, but to the entire material universe, excluding humans and their
products. In other words, land is not merely matter that occupies space; it is
space. While matter can certainly be manipulated within that space, space itself
cannot be added to or subtracted from. This is precisely why the value of
"land" is often and more accurately described as the value of
"location."

"The essential feature of land is that its quantity is fixed and
completely unresponsive to price." -- Paul A. Samuelson &
William D. Nordhaus, Economics,
16th ed., p. 248

"Land has no production cost; it is a 'free and nonreproducible gift of
nature.' The economy has only so much land, and that is that. Of course,
within limits any parcel of land can be made more usable by clearing, drainage,
and irrigation. But these are capital improvements and not changes in the
amount of land itself." [Emphasis mine] -- Campbell R.
McConnell & Stanley L. Brue, Economics, 14th ed., p. 604

"Land, which is the earth's surface, is immobile. It is true that some of
the substances of land are removable and topography can be changed, but still
that portion of the earth's surface always remains. The geographic location of
any given parcel of land can never be changed. It is rigid and fixed." -- Wade
E. Gaddy & Robert E. Hart, Real Estate
Fundamentals, 4th ed., p.
9

The answer to this question depends on (1) how you interpret
national
income figures, (2) what you consider to be
the "legitimate" functions of government, (3) the extent to which a
reduction in taxes on labor and capital would drive up the rental value of land
(and thus revenue capacity), and (4) the extent to which shifting to a
land-based tax system would increase economic output (and thus the tax base).

With respect to national income figures, many economists accept (seemingly
without question) the Commerce Department's claim that land
rent
makes up only 2% of the national income. Assuming for the sake of argument that this
is true, that means, with the national income at roughly $10.8 trillion as of
last year (2005), a land-based tax system could yield little more than $216 billion
in annual revenue.

Not all economists, however, subscribe to the belief that rent constitutes
only 2% of the national income. For instance, in The
Losses of Nations (1998), Fred Harrison explains how a study by Wall Street
economist Michael Hudson revealed that the revenue capacity of land is about 14%
of the national income, or what in 2005 would amount to approximately $1.5 trillion
in annual revenue.

With respect to the "legitimate" functions of government, there are
some who consider all current expenditures (including
corporate welfare and the
insane drug war) to be "legitimate," in
which case the LVT would need to generate roughly $3.2 trillion in annual
revenue for all levels of government. On the other hand, there are some who
consider "legitimate" only those expenditures that go toward
protecting individual rights (e.g., defending our national borders from military
invasion, enforcing laws against force and fraud, adjudicating civil
disputes, etc.), in which case the LVT would need to generate no more than $1.5 trillion
in annual revenue for all levels of government.

With respect to the reduction of taxes on labor and capital, and the effect
this has on the rental value of land, economists throughout history have
observed that, when said taxes are lowered, land rent tends to rise
proportionately. Why? For the simple and obvious reason that, the more people
can afford to pay for access to a fixed quantity of land, the more titleholders
tend to charge higher rents. If, for instance, the payroll tax were abolished,
most of the resultant increase in take home pay would be absorbed by higher
rents. Thus, it follows that the more the tax burden on labor and capital is
reduced, the more the revenue capacity of land is raised by a comparable amount.
(Economist Mason
Gaffney explains this more thoroughly in Ch. 7 of The Losses of
Nations.)

And finally, with respect to economic output, it is common knowledge that,
all else being equal, an increase in output means an increase in tax revenue
(regardless of the tax system in place). It is also common knowledge that, all
else being equal, an increase in output means an increase in the rental value of
land (regardless of whether land rent is collected publicly or privately). The
question thus arises: to what extent would a land-based tax system increase
output, and hence the tax base? On page 147 of "The Losses of Nations," economist
Nicolaus
Tideman estimates that

"...a shift to public collection of rent as the principal source of
public revenue in the U.S. in 1993 would have increased the output of the U.S. economy by
$1,602 billion above its actual level for 1993, implying that the U.S.
economy is producing only 77 percent of what it could produce with a better
tax policy." [Emphasis mine]

All that being said, if you take the Commerce Department at its word on rent being only 2% of the national
income; if you believe that
current tax revenue outlays at all levels of government should be maintained;
and if you ignore the extent to which both land values and economic output would skyrocket in the absence
of taxes on labor and capital, then you will undoubtedly conclude that land values are
not an adequate source of public revenue.

If, on
the other hand, you agree with Dr. Hudson's conclusion that rent is
approximately 14% of the national income (if
not more), then even if you oppose a moderate
reduction in overall spending; and even if you ignore the increase in land
values and economic output that would accompany any significant decrease in the taxation of labor
and capital, the LVT would still allow for the
abolition of the federal income tax. But if
you believe that $1.5 trillion could easily fund the legitimate
functions of government, and if you realize
the extent to which both land values and economic output would increase in the absence of taxes on labor
and capital, then you will almost certainly conclude, as I have, that land values are a more than adequate source of revenue for
all
levels of government.

No, it would help farmers. In the first place, the LVT would fall primarily
on urban land, not rural land, since land values are concentrated primarily in
urban areas. In the second place, the increased cost of paying a higher tax on
land value would be more than offset by (1) the savings incurred from paying
lower taxes on everything else, (2) the reversal of urban
sprawl (and thus of the inflationary pressure that sprawl currently imposes
on the value of farmland), and (3) the increase in income that would result from both a higher margin
of production and a surge in overall economic
activity.

In short, the same way it is now. Critics of the LVT are fond of pretending
that land values are not already being taxed, when in fact they are
(albeit to a limited extent) by existing property taxes. The machinery for the
LVT is already in place. Thus, all that is necessary to implement the LVT
locally is to exempt houses, buildings and other improvements from taxation, and thereby focus existing
property taxes on land values only. In this way the property tax would be
converted to a land value tax.

As for state and federal taxation, geolibertarians advocate a bottom-up
system whereby a portion of the LVT-revenue generated locally is sent to the
applicable state governments, and a portion of that, in turn, to the federal
government. Ideally, this would be phased in over a period of years. That is, as
the LVT is slightly increased each year, taxes on wages, sales and capital goods
would be slightly decreased. This process would continue until all taxation is eliminated save for
a single tax on land values.

The term, geolibertarian, contains the word "libertarian" for a
reason -- namely, to signify general agreement with the libertarian philosophy,
and thereby distinguish libertarian supporters of the LVT from non-libertarian
supporters. Thus, as one might expect, geolibertarians agree with much of the Libertarian
Party (LP) Platform.
They also agree with the basic libertarian principle that all persons are
entitled to keep the fruits of their labor.

Land, however, is not the fruit of any person's labor. This is where
the prefix "geo" comes in. "Geo" refers both to a general
emphasis on land (as it does in the term, geography), and to a particular
emphasis on the Georgist system of private land tenure. Thus, for reasons explained
elsewhere in this FAQ, geolibertarians take exception with the LP Platform's Rothbardian
position on landed property, particularly as it applies to the
community-collection of land rent.

In addition, some geolibertarians take exception, as I do, with the
Rothbardian position on monetary reform. While I agree with Rothbard's critique
of fractional reserve
banking, I disagree with his insistence that the only
way to eliminate "chronic inflation, as well as the booms and busts brought
by that system of inflationary credit," is to return to "a monetary
system where a market-produced metal, such as gold, serves as the standard
money" (The Case Against the
Fed, p. 146).

Not only is that not the
"only" way, it's not the best way. (Click
here to read about problems with the gold standard). I'm convinced there are at least
two methods of monetary reform preferable to the one proposed by
Rothbard.

One method, proposed in Robert De Fremery's Rights
vs. Privileges, is to peg the debt-free expansion of the U.S. money supply to a
"population standard." Another is to peg said expansion to the
consumer price index (or something similar) -- that way, if the price level
began to rise, the law would require (1) a moderate decrease in the percentage of
government spending that comes from newly-issued Treasury currency, and (2) a proportionate
increase in the percentage that comes out of tax revenue. If the price level
began to fall, the law would require the reverse.

As the resultant decrease in the public
debt freed up an increasing percentage of the $200+ billion wasted every
year on interest payments alone, and as the resultant boom in prosperity
increased the tax base, tax revenues would soon exceed overall expenditures,
thereby creating a real budget surplus (as opposed to the phony,
"projected" surplus we heard so much about in the late '90s). At that
point, adjustments to the growth-rate of the money supply could be made simply
by adjusting the percentage of the surplus that is rebated to taxpayers. In
other words, the rebate would go down if the price level went up, and up if the
price level went down.

Of the above list, Libertarian Party at Sea on Land and
Rights vs. Privileges are the two best introductions to
geolibertarian principles. If you enjoy heavy reading, the two best are
Progress and Poverty and Democracy vs. Socialism. (In
the latter, Max Hirsch improves upon Henry George's treatment of interest,
thereby removing the sole logical blemish from the economic views expounded in
the former.)